Saturday, October 25, 2008

Even Koonin nods

Classicists have a turn of phrase, "Even Homer Nods". The phrase originates from the Roman poet Horace (et idem indignor quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus) and has become a proverbial phrase not just for Homer's numerous continuity errors, but more generally to allow for slip-ups by someone of such high stature that the idea that they can make mistakes seems unthinkable.

Eugene Koonin is a colossus in the application of bioinformatics to the study of evolution, with over 500 papers to his name. But I am afraid in a paper just published he suffers from his very own Homeric nod.

"Charles Darwin believed that all traits of organisms have been honed to near perfection by natural selection."

which elicits a roar in response: NO, HE DIDN'T!!

Eugene appears to have overlooked a whole section of Chapter XIII of the Origin of Species, entitled Rudimentary, atrophied, or aborted organs and starting off with:

Organs or parts in this strange condition, bearing the stamp of inutility, are extremely common throughout nature. For instance, rudimentary mammæ are very general in the males of mammals: I presume that the "bastard-wing" in birds may be safely considered as a digit in a rudimentary state: in very many snakes one lobe of the lungs is rudimentary; in other snakes there are rudiments of the pelvis and hind limbs. Some of the cases of rudimentary organs are extremely curious; for instance, the presence of teeth in fœtal whales, which when grown up have not a tooth in their heads; and the presence of teeth, which never cut through the gums, in the upper jaws of our unborn calves. It has even been stated on good authority that rudiments of teeth can be detected in the beaks of certain embryonic birds. Nothing can be plainer than that wings are formed for flight, yet in how many insects do we see wings so reduced in size as to be utterly incapable of flight, and not rarely lying under wing-cases, firmly soldered together!

And as Darwin himself recognised, such rudimentary features are not some throwaway feature under the Theory of Evolution, but a crucial pillar of support for it!

On the view of descent with modification, we may conclude that the existence of organs in a rudimentary, imperfect, and useless condition, or quite aborted, far from presenting a strange difficulty, as they assuredly do on the ordinary doctrine of creation, might even have been anticipated, and can be accounted for by the laws of inheritance.

And of course similar arguments apply at the level of genomes. No intelligent designer would ever leave such a mess of junk behind in the genomes of mammals like ourselves. And why would such a creator deliberately break the gene that allows us humans to make vitamin C?! Is scurvy a message from God telling us not to undertake long sea voyages of exploration? (here is an exercise for students on this issue)

But back to the offending paper. So, here we have a "Kooninian nod" equal to the resurrection of Pylaimenes. Even the "well-born" sometimes slip up!

PS. I am afraid that Eugene's outline of natural selection in the paper itself also strikes me as rather shaky, but as I am about to disappear off on vacation, I will leave it to the reader to work out why.

So either Koonin is reading your blog, or other people have told him the same thing.

However, Koonin still continue to make this basic error of calling things "central" to Darwinism, when they are just not. This is not an error in *science* but in rhetorical *emphasis*, that mars an otherwise nice retrospective of the history of evolutionary science.

The publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin’s masterpiece The Origin of Species changed forever the way we think about life on Earth, but also the human condition. One hundred and fifty years later—and 200 years after his birth—Darwin's big idea has never been more relevant or more challenging. The Rough Guide to Evolution provides a readable introduction to evolution and its influence on almost all aspects of human thought.

Features include:

The life and works of Darwin.

The growth of evolutionary thought.

The evidence for evolution.

The evolutionary history of life on Earth and human evolution

How Darwin’s breakthrough is still denied by creationists.

The wider impact of evolutionary thinking on science and society—from physics and cosmology to Guinness ads and The Simpsons.

The Rough Guide to Evolution has been distributed to 6000 undergraduate students through the Great Read at Birmingham initiative.

About Me

I obtained my medical education from the University of Cambridge and the London Hospital Medical College. I completed my specialist training as a medical microbiologist at Bart’s Hospital in London. In the mid-1990s, while completing a PhD in molecular bacteriology at Imperial College, London, I led a team of students to victory in the national quiz show University Challenge. In 1999, I took up a chair in microbiology at Queen’s University Belfast before moving to a chair in Birmingham in 2001. I took up my current position in April 2013